Now "Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea" with its 300-plus pages on human rights abuses in North Korea and analysis of the regime was given a full-page review in Sunday’s New York Times. Based on interviews with North Korean defectors, Becker concludes the reclusive country is a model case for political science students of what happens when a dictator gains absolute power and then cuts off contact with the outside world. He argues Kim Jong-il managed to turn North Korea from a totalitarian state under his father Kim Il-sung into a "Marxist Sun King" state, emulating the tastes of European millionaires in his private life while millions of his people starved to death in one of the worst disasters of the 20th century.

Becker calls North Korea a "slave state" that operates concentration camps unique in the contemporary world. He writes that UN agencies have persistently turned a blind eye to North Korea's humanitarian disaster to avoid offending the regime, while South Korea has stood in the way of North Koreans escaping and pumped millions of dollars into its northern neighbor. Becker calls on the U.S. to persuade South Korea and China that the collapse of the Pyongyang regime would bring not turmoil but greater stability.

Becker's book is being given prime exposure as six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program went into recess and Washington prepares to name a special envoy for North Korean human rights. However, the author dismisses the possibility of U.S. military intervention to stop Pyongyang developing nuclear arms as unrealistic due to a threat of retaliation from the North with missiles tipped with biological and chemical weapons.

(englishnews@chosun.com )